Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting Hands-On

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Old school next-gen, a welcome oxymoron.

By Charles Onyett

Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting finally made its way into our office. Based on the arcade game of the same name, the Xbox 360 version of SFIIHF includes all the changes to the SFII series before Cammy, Dee-Jay, T. Hawk, and Fei Long were introduced. As such, you'll see the older art style but still have Vega, M. Bison, Balrog, and Sagat available right from the start. In addition, you'll have Chun-Li's fireball and midair spinning kicks for Ken and Ryu.

So while we were happy to get our hands on Hyper Fighting, it isn't finished. This was obvious when we tried to play the game online. Between people at the office the game was fine. However, on games outside our office network it suffered from crippling lag. Again, this is still being worked out, and we're hopeful it's improved.

For single player content, the game offers Arcade, Versus, and Training modes. Arcade takes you through the standard mode everyone's used to, flying you around the world as you take down each fighter on the roster. Versus pits two players against each other, keeping stats of each character's wins and losses. This mode is way better for two players since it lets you reselect your fighter after each match and doesn't force you to hit start every time you lose. Training lets you fight against an immobile opponent to, well, train. For the especially narcissistic, you can record the training session and replay it.

Obviously the multiplayer is of chief concern here, and Capcom delivers plenty of modes. For a ranked match, you can engage in Quick, Custom, or Created matches. Quick lets you hop right into an available server. Custom gives you some search parameters, including round length and whether voice chat is enabled. Created matches let you send out invites to specific players. Ranked matches, unlike Player matches, do not allow for rematches.

In Player matches more game options become available. In addition to Quick, Custom, and Created matches, you can hop into Quarter matches for a pseudo-arcade experience. Quarter matches also have Quick, Custom, and Create options. Choosing the Custom match option in Quarter match will bring you to a server list of current games running. From there you can either pick a game with open spots or create your own. Quarter matches can accommodate up to five players. Two face off in battle, while the other three wait in a queue and are able to watch the featured match take place. The loser of the match gets booted out and, assuming there's a spot, returned to the queue. The winner of the match goes on to fight the queued player in the topmost spot, mimicking a line of players waiting and watching at an arcade unit.

Aside from watching the match, players can also heckle each other through the headsets and check each others gamertags. On the screen each player is represented by a virtual "quarter," the image on which can be changed to show any of the Street Fighter characters. After you've beaten a few faces online, statistics are amassed, including overall rank, total matches played, total wins, losses, draws, and average opponent rating. Leaderboards will also let everyone know who's the best as they track overall rank, monthly rank, character rankings, and consecutive wins.

Aside from all its game modes, SFIIHF has a number of audio, video, and control options. The game not only gives you the ability to adjust the screen's position, but also the screen's size. If you don't stretch out your playable area on an HDTV, you're going to be staring at a 4:3 fighting area blue background rife with scrolling laser lines to fill out the widescreen. Stretching everything to the edges of the screen eliminates this distraction, but does stretch the graphics beyond their standard aspect ratio. The squish is minimal enough, and less of a visual irritation than the laser lines.

The sound options let you fool around with sound effect and music volume, as well as turn spectator voices on and off. Other options include setting your difficulty level, time limit, vibration, favorite side of the screen, and your quarter icon picture. Controls are fully customizable, meaning you can assign the three punches and kicks to any button, as well as punch x3 and kick x3. Once all these options are set, you can save them and they'll stay the same for when you boot up again.

In terms of how the game actually plays, there are mixed reactions in the office so far. Some can't stand the lack of an arcade joystick. Some claim there's a slight lag between when they press a button and when the action was actually performed during network games. Personally, I had no problem using the D-Pad and thought the game controlled fine. Graphics are slightly smoother than what you may remember from the arcade version, and all the classic animations, designs, and sounds remain intact. Like any Xbox game, SFIIHF has 12 achievements, which we've listed below. Of course we're looking forward to this one, but we're really hoping Capcom makes some big improvements to the lag, as most people who'll pick this up will be doing so for the online play.